Japan

Woodblock print (ukiyo-e)

• Yoshitoshi
• http://ukiyo-e.org

Avant-garde

Groups

• Fyūzankai (Fusain Society, 1912), post-impressionists.
• Nika-kai (Nika Society, Second Section Association), fauvists.
• Miraiha bijutsu kyōkai (未来派美術協会, Futurist Art Association, 1920-1922; Asano, Fumon, Kinoshita), futurists, [1].
• Akushon (アクション, Action, 1923; Nakagawa, Yabe, Kanbara, Koga, Nakahara), futurists.
• MAVO (1923-1925).
• Sanka zōkei bijutsu kyōkai (Three Division Plastic Arts Society, 1924; Kinoshita).
• NNK (Okada, Takamizawa, Toda).
• Senkyūhyaku sanjū-nen kyōkai (1930; Koga, Noguchi, Kawaguchi, Fukuzawa; 1930).
• Dokuritsu bijutsu kyōkai (Independent Art Society, 1931-1939; Satomi, Kojima).
• Shin seisaku kyōkai (New Art Work Society; Nakanishi, Inokuma).
• Shinzōkei (1935-1937).
• Jiyū bijutsu (1937-1943).
• Prokino (日本プロレタリア映画同盟; Nihon Puroretaria Eiga Dōmei; Proletarian Film League of Japan).

Artists and writers

Ryūsei Kishida (岸田 劉生) （1891−1929) [2], [3]; Jirō Yoshihara (吉原 治良), [4]; Tai Kanbara (神原 拓也); Tomoyoshi Murayama (村山知義); Masamu Yanase; Kamenosuke Ogata; Shuzo Oura; Shinro Kadowaki; Shuichiro Kinoshita; Osamu Shibuya; Iwane Sumiya; Tatsuo Okada (岡田竜夫); Kimimaro Yabashi; Tatsuo Toda; Masao Kato; Hideichirō Kinoshita; Ogata Kamenosuke (尾形亀之助), [5]; Yanase Masamu (柳瀬正夢) [6]; Shūzō Ōura (大浦周造); Michinao Takamizawa; Yamada Shinkichi (山田伸吉), dadaist; Hagiwara Kyōjirō (萩原恭次郎), writer [7]; Hayashi Fumiko, writer; Jun Tsuji (辻潤), dadaist, [8]; Yoshiyuki Eisuke (吉行 エイスケ), dadaist, [9]; Noboru Kitawaki.

Publications

Mavo

• Mavo, 1923, [20] pp. Catalogue for the first Mavo exhibition, held at Denpōin Temple in Asakusa, 28 July-3 August 1923.
• "Mavo Manifesto", Mavo, 1923, pp [1-2]; repr. in Nihon no Dada 1920-1970, ed. Yoshio Shirakawa, Tokyo: Hakuba Shobō and Kazenobara, 1988, pp 35-36.
• Tomoyoshi Murayama, Ichimei ishikiteki kōsei shugi e no dōtei [現在の藝術と未來の藝術 一名、意識的構成主義への道程], 1924.
• Mavo, eds. Tatsuo Okada and Tomoyoshi Murayama, 7 issues, July 1924-August 1925.

On art and the machine

• Tomoyoshi Murayama, "Kikaiteki yōso no geijutsu he no dō'nyū" [The Introduction of Mechanical Elements into Art], Mizue 227 (January 1924).
• Shin keitai bi danmen [Profile of the New Form of Beauty], Special Issue of Atorie 6:5 (May 1929).
  • Sadanosuke Nakada, [A Theory of the New Form of Beauty].
  • Tomoyoshi Murayama, "Saikin no geijutsu ni okeru kikaibi" [The Beauty of the Machine in Contemporary Art].
• Takao Itagaki, Kikai to geijutsu to no kōryū [Interactions Between Art and the Machine], Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1929.
• Kikai geijutsuron [機械藝術論; Theory of the Machine and Art], Tokyo: Tenninsha [天人社], 1930; repr. by Tokyo: Yumani Shobō, 1991. Articles by ten authors from different fields of art, each writing on the relationship between the machine and their particular genre. [10]
• Toshimi Kimura (ed.), Kikai to geijutsu kakumei [The Machine and Artistic Revolution], Tokyo: Hakuyōsha, 1930; repr. in Kikai to geijutsu (Korekushon Modan Toshi Bunka 45) [Machine and Art (Modern Urban Culture Collection 45)], ed. Nobuhiko Baba, Tokyo: Yumani Shobō, 2009. Translations of articles by R.M. Fox, Edward J. O'Brien, and others, and two articles by Kimura. The book focuses on reviewing how the machine played crucial roles at the times when various new artistic styles emerged as well as on the relationship between the machine and capitalism or the proletariat.
• Harue Koga, "Kikai to bijutsu" [The Machine and Art], Wakakusa (June 1931).

Artists' books

• Hagiwara Kyōjirō, Shikei senkoku [Death Sentence], Tokyo: Chōryūsha, 1925, 161+6 pp. Illustrated by Mavo. Anthology of visual poetry. [11]
• Ernst Toller, Tsubame no sho [The Swallow Book], trans. Tomoyoshi Murayama, Tokyo: Chōryūsha, 1925, 106 pp. Illustrated by Tatsuo Okada. [12]
• Hideo Saito, Aozameta douteikyo [The Pale-Faced Virgin's Mad Thoughts], Tokyo: Chōryūsha, 1926, 120 pp. Illustrated by Tatsuo Okada. Anthology of visual poetry. [13] [14]

Other

• Tai Kanbara, Miraiha kenkyū [未来派研究, Futurism Studies], Tokyo, 1925, 362 pp. Comprehensive work on Italian Futurism. [15]
• Jun Tsuji, Furō mango [浮浪漫語], 1922.
• Jun Tsuji, Desu pera [ですぺら], 1924.
• Jun Tsuji, Zetsubō no sho [絶望の書; Book of Despair], 1930, 458 pp.
• Hagiwara Kyōjirō, Danpen: Hagiwara Kyōjirō shishū [断片: 萩原恭次郎詩集], 1931, 71 pp.

Resources

• Japanese Surrealism, blog.
• The New Modernism: Japanese Modernist & Avant-Garde Poetry, Translations, Explorations, blog
• http://www.douban.com/note/187789598/

Literature

• Gennifer Weisenfeld, "Mavo's Conscious Constructivism: Art, Individualism, and Daily Life in Interwar Japan", Art Journal 55:3, Autumn 1996, pp 64-73.
• James Fraser, Steven Heller, Seymour Chwast, Japanese Modern: Graphic Design Between the Wars, Chronicle Books, 1996, 144 pp. Review: Sweeney (Trans-Lux).
• Toshiharu Omuka, "Tada Dada (Devotedly Dada) For the Stage: the Japanese Movement 1920-1925", in The Eastern Dada Orbit: Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Central Europe and Japan, ed. Stephen Foster, G.K. Hall, 1998, pp 223-310.
• William O. Gardner, Avant-Garde Literature and the New City: Tokyo, 1923—1931 (Japan, Kyojiro Hagiwara, Hayashi Fumiko), Stanford University, 1999, 243 pp. Ph.D. Thesis. [16]
• Avant-garde in Japan: Art into Life 1900-1940, Kyoto: National Museum of Modern Art, 1999. Catalogue. [17]
• Miryam Sas, Fault Lines: Cultural Memory and Japanese Surrealism, Stanford University Press, 1999, xvi+250 pp. [18]. Reviews: Hirata (Harvard J Asiatic Studies), Vincent (J Japanese Studies), Swain (Asian Theatre J), Forum for Modern Language Studies, Selland.
• Toshiharu Omuka, "Futurism in Japan, 1909-1920", in International Futurism in Arts and Literature, ed. Günter Berghaus, Walter de Gruyter, 2000, pp 244-270.
• Gennifer Weisenfeld, Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931, University of California Press, 2002, 368 pp.
• Toshiko Ellis, "The Topography of Dalian and the Cartography of Fantastic Asia in Anzai Fuyue's Poetry", Comparative Literature Studies, 41:4 (2004), pp 482-500. [19] [20]
• Yoshio Shirakawa (ed.), 日本のダダ―1920‐1970, 2005, 168 pp. (Japanese) [21]
• William O. Gardner, Advertising Tower: Japanese Modernism and Modernity in the 1920s, Harvard University Asia Center, 2006.
• Gennifer Weisenfeld, "Publicity and Propaganda in 1930s Japan: Modernism as Method", Design Issues 25:4 (Autumn 2009), pp 13-28.
• William J. Tyler (ed.), Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938, University of Hawaii Press, 2008, 605 pp. [22]
• Majella Munro, "Dada, MAVO and the Japanese Avant-Garde: A Prologue to the Introduction of Surrealism to Japan", Rebus 4, Autumn/Winter 2009.
• Yang Wang, "Russia Constructed: the Practice of Avant-gardism in Taisho-era Japan, 1912-1926", Dec 2009, 28 pp.
• Gennifer Weisenfeld, "Japanese Typographic Design and the Art of Letterforms", in Bridges to Heaven: Essays on East Asian Art in Honor of Professor Wen C. Fong, Vol. 1, New Jersey: P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art, 2011, 827-848.
• Roy Starrs (ed.), Rethinking Japanese Modernism, Leiden and Boston: Global Oriental, 2012.
  • Chingshin Wu, "Transcending the Boundaries of the 'isms': Pursuing Modernity through the Machine in Japanese Avant-Garde Art", pp 339-361.
• Majella Munro, Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan, 1925-70, The Enzo Press, 2012. Introduction.
• Thomas Hackner, "Worlds Apart? The Japan-Europe Historical Avant-Garde Relationship", in Decentring the Avant-Garde, eds. Per Bäckström and Benedikt Hjartarson, Rodopi, 2014. [23]
• Justin Jesty, Art and Engagement in Early Postwar Japan, Cornell University Press, 2018, 326 pp.
• Chinghsin Wu, Parallel Modernism Koga Harue and Avant-Garde Art in Modern Japan, University of California Press, 2019, 248 pp. [24]
• "Japan: Avant-garde", n.d.
• Dada in Japan (Japanese Wikipedia)
• Further bibliography, [25]
• More

Anti-art, Non-art

• Jikken Kōbō (実験工房), collective, Tokyo, 1951-1957.
• Gutai Art Association (具体美術協会), collective, Osaka and Ashiya, 1954-1972.

• Kyushu Group (Kyūshū-ha), Fukuoka City, late 1950s-early 1960s.

• Tokyo Fluxus, 1957-1970s
• Sōgetsu Art Center (SAC), 1958-1971.
• Neo-Dada Organizers (ネオ・ダダイズム・オルガナイザーズ), collective, Tokyo, 1960-1962.
• Group Ongaku (グループ音楽), collective, Tokyo, 1960-1962.
• Hi-Red Center (ハイレッド・センター), collective, Tokyo, 1963-1964.
• 1000-Yen Note Incident Discussion Group, Tokyo, 1964-c1970.

• Ankoku Butoh Group, Tokyo, c1959-early 1970s.
• Vivo, Tokyo, 1959-1961.
• Underground theatres, Tokyo, c1966-c1975.
• Provoke, Tokyo, 1968-1970.

• Intermedia, Tokyo and Osaka, c1968-c1970.
• Psychophysiology Research Institute, 1969-1970.
• Bikyōtō, Tokyo, 1969-1974.
• Japan World Exposition '70, Osaka

• Atsuko Tanaka
• Shūji Terayama
• Yasunao Tone

Exhibitions

• Japon des avant-gardes, 1910-1970, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Dec 1986-Mar 1987. Press dossier.
• Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations in the Public Sphere in Postwar Japan, 1950-1970, Getty Center, Mar-Jun 2007. [26], [27]
• Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde, MoMA, New York, 2012.

Resources

• A timeline of postwar Japanese art movements, Getty, 2007.

Literature

• David Elliot, Kazo Kaido, Ichiro Hariu, et al., Reconstructions: Avant-Garde Art in Japan 1945-1965, Oxford: Museum of Modern Art Oxford, 1985, 96 pp. Catalogue. [28] [29]
• Geijutsu to nichijō – hangeijutsu/hangeijutsu [Art and the Everyday – Anti-Art], ed. Kokuritsu Kokusai Bijutsukan, Osaka: Kokuritsu Kokukusai, 1991. Catalogue. (Japanese)
• Mokuma Kikuhata, Sengo bijutsu to han geijutsu [Post-war fine art and anti-art], Fukuoka City: Kaichōsha, 1993. (Japanese)
• Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, ed. Alexandra Munroe, New York: Abrams, and New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1994, 416 pp. Catalogue; surveys Japanese art from the 1950s through the early 1990s. [30] [31] [32] (English),(Japanese)
• Midori Yoshimoto, Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York, Rutgers University Press, 2005.
• Japanese Women Artists in Avant-Garde Movements, 1950-1975, Tochigi: Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, 2005, 205 pp. Exh. cat. Texts by Reiko Kokatsu and Midori Yoshimoto. [33] (Japanese)/(English)
• Midori Yoshimoto, "Women Artists in the Japanese Postwar Avant-Garde: Celebrating a Multiplicity", Woman's Art Journal, Summer 2006, pp 1-7.
• Thomas R.H. Havens, Radicals and Realists in the Japanese Nonverbal Arts: The Avant-Garde Rejection of Modernism, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006, 296 pp. Introduction. [34]. Reviews: Tiampo (CAA), Gardner (Monumenta Nipponica), Igarashi (J Asian Studies), Bunch (Art Book).
• Charles Merewether, Rika Iezumi Hiro (eds.), Art, Anti-art, Non-art: Experimentations in the Public Sphere in Postwar Japan, 1950-1970, Getty Publications, 2007, 140 pp. Catalogue. [35] [36]
• Reiko Tomii, "After the 'Descent to the Everyday': Japanese Collectivism from Hi Red Center to The Play, 1964-1973", in Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination After 1945, eds. Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, pp 45-75.
• Midori Yoshimoto, "From Space to Environment: The Origins of Kankyo and the Emergence of Intermedia Art in Japan", Art Journal 67:3, Fall 2008, pp 25-46.
• Reiko Tomii, "'International Contemporaneity' in the 1960s: Discoursing on Art in Japan and Beyond", Japan Review 21, 2009, pp 123-147.
• Yoshimoto, Knowles, Schneemann, Seagull, Moore, "An evening with Fluxus women: a roundtable discussion", Women & Performance 19:3, Nov 2009, pp 369-389.

• KuroDaraiJee (Raiji Kuroda, 黒田雷児), 肉体のアナーキズム：1960年代・日本美術におけるパフォーマンスの地下水脈, Tokyo: grambooks, 2010, 767 pp. Publisher. [37] (Japanese)
  • Anarchy of the Body: Undercurrents of Performance Art in 1960s Japan, Leuven University Press, 2023. (English)

• Taro Nettleton, Throw Out the Books, Get Out in the Streets: Subjectivity and Space in Japanese Underground Art of the 1960s, University of Rochester, 2010, vi+232 pp. PhD dissertation.
• Steven C. Ridgely, Japanese Counterculture: The Antiestablishment Art of Terayama Shūji, University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
• Midori Yoshimoto, "Expo ’70 and Japanese Art: Dissonant Voices An Introduction and Commentary", Review of Japanese Culture and Society, Dec 2011, pp 1-12.
• Diana C. Stoll (ed.), Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2012, 228 pp. Catalogue for the exhibition curated by Doryun Chong with Nancy Linn. Excerpt. Exhibition. [38] [39]
• positions: asia critique 21(2): "Collectivism in 20th-Century Japanese Art", eds. Reiko Tomii and Midori Yoshimoto, Spring 2013. [40]
• William Andrews, Dissenting Japan: A History of Japanese Radicalism and Counterculture, from 1945 to Fukushima, London: Hurst, 2016, xxv+356 pp.
• Namiko Kunimoto, Stakes of Exposure: Anxious Bodies in Postwar Japanese Art, University of Minnesota Press, 2017. [41]
• Further bibliography

Visual art

• Mono-ha, 1968-c75.

Exhibitions

• Contemporary Japanese Art; Fifth Japan Art Festival Exhibition, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1970.

Literature

• Thomas R.H. Havens, Artist and Patron in Postwar Japan: Dance, Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts, 1955-1980, Princeton University Press, 1982.

• Doryun Chong, Michio Hayashi, Kenji Kajiya, Fumihiko Sumitomo (eds.), From Postwar To Postmodern, Art In Japan 1945-1989: Primary Documents, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2012, 464 pp. [42]

• Adrian Favell, Before and After Superflat: A Short History of Japanese Contemporary Art 1990-2011, Hong Kong: Blue Kingfisher, 2012, 246 pp; new ed., 2017.

• Peter Eckersall, Performativity and Event in 1960s Japan: City, Body, Memory, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

• Reiko Tomii, "Shortlist | Japan", Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, n.d.

Resources

• http://adrianfavell.tumblr.com/

Experimental music, Sound art

• Miki Kaneda, "Experimental Music in Japan (A Short List)", Post at MoMA, 15 Feb 2013.
• Katsushi Nakagawa, "History of Sound in the Arts in Japan Between the 1960s and 1990s", in Fractured Scenes: Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia, eds. Damien Charrieras and François Mouillot, Springer, 2021, pp 225-239. [43]

Film, video

Collectives

Zero Jigen, Video Hiroba, Video Information Center.

Exhibitions, screenings

• JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film and Video 1955–Now, 2004-2005, 2007. Curated by Michelle Puetz and Jonathan M. Hall.

• Art Theater Guild and Japanese Underground Cinema, 1960-1986, MoMA, New York, 2012-2013. [44]

Publications

• Image Forum, Japanese Experimental Film & Video 1955–1994, Osaka: Kirin Plaza Osaka, 1994.

• Kenjin Miwa, Mika Kuraya (eds.), Waiting for Video: Works from the 1960s to Today, Tokyo: National Museum of Modern Art, 2009, 295 pp. Catalogue. [45] (Japanese)/(English)

• Yuriko Furuhata, Cinema of Actuality: Japanese Avant-Garde Filmmaking in the Season of Image Politics, Duke University Press, 2013. (English)

• Julian Ross, Beyond the Frame: Intermedia and Expanded Cinema in 1960s-1970s Japan, Leeds: University of Leeds, 2014, 287 pp. PhD dissertation. (English)

• Japanese Expanded Cinema and Intermedia: Critical Texts of the 1960s, eds. Ann Adachi-Tasch, Go Hirasawa and Julian Ross, intro. Julian Ross, Berlin: Archive Books, 2020, 222 pp. Introduction. Publisher. Editors. Reviews: Pires (CAA), Gómez (Hyperallergic), Macfarlane (Brooklyn Rail). (English)

Theatre

Literature

• Concerned Theatre Japan, ed. David G. Goodman, 9 issues, 1969-73. [46]
• Akihiko Senda, Gendai engeki no kokai, Riburo Poto, 1988. (Japanese)
  • The Voyage of Contemporary Japanese Theatre, trans. J. Thomas Rimer, University of Hawaii Press, 1997, 306 pp. Reviews: Boyd (Monumenta Nipponica), Kominz (Asian Theatre J), Japan Forum. [47]
• David Goodman, Japanese Drama and Culture in the 1960s: The Return of the Gods, M.E. Sharpe, 1988.
• Peter Eckersall, Theorizing the Angura Space: Avant-garde Performance and Politics in Japan, 1960-2000, Leiden: Brill, 2006.
• Performance Paradigm 2: Japan After the 1960s: The Ends of the Avant-Garde", eds. Peter Eckersall and Edward Scheer, Sydney: Performance Paradigm, Mar 2006.
• Miryam Sas, Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan: Moments of Encounter, Engagement, and Imagined Return, Harvard University Asia Center, 2011, xvii+275 pp. Reviews: Ridgely (Japan Forum), Baird (Monumenta Nipponica), Sorgenfrei (Theatre Research Int'l), Fujii (Trans-Asia Photography R), Gerow.

Computer art

Hiroshi Kawano, CTG

Onkyo

• Improvised Music from Japan
• http://web.archive.org/web/20080630054100/http://dusan.satori.sk/i/jp.php

Media art

Akihiro Kubota, Seiko Mikami (三上 晴子)

Events

Japan Media Arts Festival (Tokyo, since 1997), Japan Media Arts Festival in Kyoto (since c.2010), Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions (since 2009), CREAM: International Festival for Arts and Media Yokohama (2009).

Literature

• Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, ロボット・アヴァンギャルド―20世紀芸術と機械 [Robot Avant-Garde: 20th Century Art and the Machine], Tokyo: Parco, 1985, 257 pp. (Japanese)

• Minoru Hatanaka, et al., N_ext: New Generation of Media Artists, Tokyo: NTT Publishing, 2004, 94 pp. Catalogue. [48] (Japanese)/(English)

• Fumihiko Sumitomo, et al., Possible Futures: Japanese Postwar Art and Technology, Tokyo: NTT Publishing, 2005, 126 pp. Catalogue. [49] (Japanese)/(English)

• Fumihiko Sumitomo, et al., Deep Images: Why We Need Images to Live?, Tokyo: Film Art, 2009, 168 pp. Catalogue. [50] (Japanese)/(English)

• Yvonne Spielmann, Hybridkultur, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010, 293 pp. Publisher. (German)
  • Hybrid Culture: Japanese Media Arts in Dialogue with the West, trans. Anja Welle and Stan Jones, MIT Press, 2012, 280 pp. Publisher.

• Jung-Yeon Ma (マ・ジョンヨン), Nihon media āto-shi / A Critical History of Media Art in Japan [日本メディアアート史], Tokyo: Artes, 2014, ix+355 pp. Publisher. (Japanese)

• Miryam Sas, Feeling Media: Potentiality and the Afterlife of Art, Duke University Press, 2022.

	Countries avant-garde, modernism, experimental art, media culture, social practice
Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Central and Eastern Europe, Chile, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kosova, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Slovenia, Slovakia, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States